


Rewrite

by sibley (ferns)



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Angst with a Hopeful Ending, Character Death, Dysfunctional Family, Families of Choice, Implied Sexual Content, Multi, Neurodivergency, Non-Linear Narrative, Other, Season/Series 05 Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2019-06-08 23:47:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15254739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferns/pseuds/sibley
Summary: Time travel can mess you up, just a little bit. It's hard to talk to people in the past, in what istheirever-changing present, when all you know about them is what their future holds.Or, Nora Dawn West-Allen's past, present, and future. (But maybe it's all the same thing, anyway.)





	Rewrite

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for death, both referenced and witnessed within the fic (the one witnessed is caused by fire), implied/referenced dysphoria, and character injury. As usual, let me know if you think I should warn for anything else.

Cisco is the one who gets the call, and Nora knows immediately that something is wrong. She almost starts crying when Cisco looks at her, voice cracking as he says, “The Houses are gone.”

The mug she’s holding shatters when it hits the floor. Nora feels like she can’t breathe. The Houses were the safest places on the planet for metahumans and _homo magi_ to hide. If they’re gone, then there’s almost nowhere else in North America to go. “Both of them?”

Cisco nods, face tight. “There-there aren’t very many survivors. I have to- _we_ have to get over there, now.”

Nora nods and closes her eyes when he pulls her through the breach, stumbling heavily into him when acrid smoke hits her nose. The houses are _screaming,_ she can hear them, and she watches them burn, horrified. They were supposed to be nearly indestructible, they were supposed to be _protected,_ they were supposed to be _safe-_

Cisco does a headcount. Traci is the only Croatoan left, unless you count Leroy, who she’s clinging to. Lori is leaning heavily against her, clutching ‘Mew (thank _god_ the baby made it out okay) to her chest, a little magical bubble of oxygen keeping their lungs clear of any smoke. Mary is frantically rocking back and forth, clutching her tablet.

Nora can see more shadowy figures sprinting away from the building on the other side, and she _knows_ not everyone could have been there, but as she circles it and tries to figure out who’s missing, she realizes that Mary’s saying something, her tablet repeating the same two words over and over again.

_‘Home inside. Home inside. Home inside. Home inside. Home inside. Home inside.’_

Oh. Oh god. Oh, god, please, no.

* * *

Cisco pats her arm and beams at her, watching the dust settle from where she outclassed her dad’s top speed-but not yet Wally’s. Nora’s comfortable with that. It’s fine not to be the fastest. That was never her goal.

“You’re a regular speed demon,” Cisco grins, tossing her some grape soda. She glares lightheartedly at his back. He’s been trying that trick since she was seven, and if he thinks she’s going to fall for it _again…_ But he likes it when she does it, and it makes them both feel normal, so she sighs and opens it and lets foam get all over her hands.

Cisco laughs and she smiles back and licks her hands and then tries to touch him, almost forgetting that this isn’t the Cisco she knows, that this is a younger version of the man who helped raise her. She can’t forget, though, because the sunshine on her back is so different from home, and the easiness with which Cisco smiles and laughs was never there before.

No, she can’t forget. She can’t forget what she came back here to do. Cisco himself doesn't let her forget, with his fingers that aren't yet prosthetics and his face that isn't permanently creased from worry mixed in with the comforting laugh lines. He feels like her Cisco, but he's not. He's the Cisco hers could be.

* * *

Nora’s the one who rushes into the flames, ignoring Cisco’s shouts from behind her to be careful, to come back, to tell him what the hell she thinks she’s doing. Telling her that it’s too dangerous, that he’s so sorry but they can’t go in to find anyone-

She tunes it out. She owes it to them. She owes it to them to find them she needs to find them she needs to find them she needs to find them-Nora repeats that over and over and over again. A silent mantra. _I need to find them._

She does. It’s too late already, but she grabs the bodies and brings them outside anyway. She _owes_ it to them. She _owes_ them this. She owes their family a chance to say goodbye. Because Nora wasn’t there to stop the Houses from falling, she wasn’t _there_ to save everyone. Like her dad would have.

“They said-they said I had to get ‘Mewy out, no matter what,” Lori says numbly, looking at Nora like she’s asking for forgiveness. “They said I had to-I didn’t-I didn’t kill them, I didn’t, I didn’t…” She drops to her knees, grabbing for Ralph’s hand like she’s trying to prove he’s still alive. “I didn’t mean to leave them.”

Nora backs away, making eye contact with Cisco as she does so. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I can’t-”

She turns around and runs and runs and runs and runs until she can’t run anymore.

* * *

“Nora?” She looks up, and Wally waves down at her. “Hey. I just-uh-I wanted to… Say hi?”

He sounds so awkward and he looks just like in the pictures of him when he was younger, and Linda’s not there, and Nora can’t help but smile at him. “Hi.”

He sits down next to her and for a moment all they can do is sit in a supremely awkward silence. Wally breaks it. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but since you’re from the future, does that mean you can, like… Give us spoilers about stuff that’s going to happen?”

“Yeah. But I’m _really_ not supposed to. Interacting with you guys is okay, since none of you are me, but giving you guys hints about what’s going to happen… That would be _really_ bad.” She smiles a little. “You taught me that, actually. You and Cisco. And _that_ is the only ‘spoiler’ you guys’ll be getting.”

Nora mimes locking her lips and throwing away the key, which Wally laughs at, way too loudly for something not actually funny. He wonders if he can see her parents in her. Cisco always says she reminds him of Iris, but Iris always says that she’s just like Barry. Nora is more inclined to agree with Cisco. She never met Barry, but from what she’s heard… Yeah, she’s way more like her mom than like her dad.

* * *

Nora knows Cisco must’ve told her mom that the Houses fell, because when she finally stumbles back home, rubbing her eyes and with a hole in her stomach that she’s not sure is entirely from hunger, Iris is waiting for her. She’s sitting on the front porch in the rocking chair that she hates, gently running her fingers over a creased copy of _The Life Story of the Flash._

“Hey, mom,” Nora chokes out, and then she just breaks down crying. Iris stands up and opens her arms and lets Nora crash into them, humming and rocking her and rubbing her back gently as she sobs into her neck, entire body trembling. “I couldn’t save them, I wasn’t there in time, I couldn’t save them just like I-I-I couldn’t save _him_ and-”

“Nora,” Iris says firmly, squeezing her daughter tightly, “no. There was nothing you could have done, honey. We couldn’t have known they were using captive metahumans as weapons, okay? _You_ couldn’t have known that. It’s not your fault they died, just like it’s not your fault that your brother died. Okay? It’s okay. It’s okay, sweetie.”

“It’s not okay,” Nora sniffles. “It’s not okay. I thought-I thought I was getting better, I tried to stop thinking about him because aren’t you supposed to stop thinking about someone to heal? I thought-because I wasn’t thinking about him as much-and then today when I saw their bodies, I just-I just couldn’t… All I can think about is when they took him. And then when I’m not thinking about _him_ I’m thinking about how ‘Mew isn’t gonna-isn’t gonna know their parents, and how that’s my fault, and-and-”

“Sweetie, breathe,” Iris hums, hugging her even close and rocking her from side to side like she used to when Nora didn’t know how to manage her sensory overloads and came to her mom first thing in the morning to get squeezed. “I don’t expect you to get over your brother, okay? I’m never going to forget him, just like I’m never going to forget your father. I see him-I see both of them in you every day, honey. It’s okay not to move on. He-he only died a few years ago, baby. I don’t expect you to have forgotten him, now or ever.”

* * *

“You-you really do look like me, don’t you?” Iris tilts her head, resisting the urge to pull Nora into a hug from behind. She’s not as wary about being touched by Iris, Cisco, and Wally as she is by Barry, for reasons she hasn’t disclosed, but Iris remembers how it was to be a kid and not like to be touched by strange adults-because that’s what Iris is. Strange. To her own daughter. And Nora isn’t really a kid anymore, is she?

Nora smiles at her, reflected in the mirror. She adjusts the jacket a little, rocking back and forth on her heels just slightly. One of Barry’s favorite motions. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. “Cisco says so too. All the time.”

“Are you close with the Cisco in your time?” It’s part honest question designed to help her get to know the daughter she hasn’t yet had the chance to raise, and half probe. Nora has hardly told them anything, and Iris is a naturally curious person. It’s not the best combination when you’re trying to keep a secret.

Nora nods, slow and guarded. “Yeah. He helped you raise me. Him and-well, his wife.” She figures that isn’t _too_ much of a spoiler, right? She’s pretty sure this isn’t during the time they were broken up… Ugh, there’s a _reason_ she didn’t want to approach her mom in the past until she absolutely had to. She knows how to make her say what she’s really feeling and get her to tell the truth. “I love him.”

Iris smiles and it makes Nora’s insides warm. “I’m glad to hear that. I… I’m not really sure what I’m doing, but…” Her throat suddenly feels tight and her eyes feel like they’re burning. Iris swallows tightly. “I’m glad he was there to help us. And looking at you now, I just… I know that we _all_ must have done something very, very right.”

Nora’s face feels hot. It’s not that her mom doesn’t tell her that she loves her, or that she’s proud of her. She does it all the time. But that’s the Iris West who knows her, who raised her, who comforted her after nightmares and sometimes makes her favorite food to surprise her and who doesn’t tell anyone that Nora’s still afraid of scary movies, the mom who Nora has seen break down in tears over a trigger that reminded her of her dead husband.

Not the mom who has only ever seen her at her most desperate, trying to change the timeline, trying to make things right. She doesn’t even _realize_ how Nora is fraying at the seams, does she? If her mom-even if it isn’t the mom who Nora _really_ knows, at least not yet-can be proud of her in this state… Maybe she’s actually someone worth being proud of.

* * *

“Bad day?”

Nora groans in response and shoves her face deeper into the pillow. She doesn’t want to talk. Or move. Or breathe. Or think. Or exist. It’s too _hard_ sometimes.

“I’m taking that as a yes.” Nora feels her bed move as someone sits down next to her. Calloused fingers rub her bare shoulders, moving down to rub her upper back when Nora lifted her spine in response. The fingers on her skin heat up ever so slightly and Nora hums, squirming deeper into the mattress. “Oof, I know that look. Body struggles?”

“Mhmm. _Way_ worse than usual. Dunno why.” Nora lifts her head up on her hands. “And it doesn’t help that I got no sleep last night because _someone_ was being loud _all night.”_ She glares. “I wonder why whenever you’re around literally all I can hear is Cisco, nonstop, while the rest of us are trying to _sleep?_ He sleeps in the room right next to me! We have _thin walls!”_

Cynthia laughs loudly into her hand and readjusts her eyepatch a little bit. Nora’s only ever seen pictures of her without it. Technically, she didn’t have it when Nora was born, but she can’t remember that far back. It seems impossible. Like Cisco with hands or Ralph without Sue. Something else from the past she’s only ever heard stories about. “Hey, I hardly get to see him these days. I gotta make it count, you know?”

“Can you make it count _literally_ anywhere else?” Nora grumbles, rolling over onto her back. She’s wearing the baggiest pants she could possibly find and the only clean sports bra she could scavenge that her mother wouldn’t yell at her for wearing. Nora’s always had laundry issues, okay?

“Sorry, sweetie.” Cynthia laughs again, shaking her head. “There’s almost nowhere else on the planet left to go. And as nice as Zatanna is, Shadowcrest itself isn’t exactly friendly to people like me. If we don’t get more places to hide, I’m afraid that pretty soon-” She cuts herself off. “Nevermind.”

“What were you going to say?” Nora closes her eyes. “That the metahuman population is getting smaller every day, and the mutant population stopped growing in the 2000s, so you’re afraid that we’re going extinct? That you and Cisco are planning on taking as many people as you possibly can and running with them to other Earths so that they’ll be safe? I heard you and my mom talking about that last night before I went to bed.”

“It’s a dangerous world, kiddo.” Cynthia sighs and pats her knee. “Come on. You said you were having a hard time today, right? Let’s put a movie in, or something.”

* * *

Barry Allen. He looks… Strange. He never seemed to when she looked at the pictures. But he does now, while he leans over a dining room table in the loft Iris had to move out of once her twins were born.

He doesn’t look like the statues before they were torn down, or like he’s been described in the stories. Infallible and fast and strong. He looks like a skinny white guy with gangly limbs and a bad posture and sunburn on his neck and the standout freckles she inherited who’s looking at her like he’s worried if he blinks she’ll disappear.

Nora doesn’t think she looks like him at all, except the freckles and the long legs and the big hands that she _hates_ on the bad days because they make her insides feel like they’re being shredded and like her skin is too small. Her brother used to say that she looked like their mom way more than like their dad, and he helped her on those days, and she suddenly wants to tell Barry Allen, the hero of her childhood, about his now dead son.

“So,” he says, “you’re my daughter? What-how old are you? How long have you been back in the past? Uh… What’s…”

Nora lets him fish around for words a little while longer before replying, “Yes, I’m not sure but I’m somewhere in my twenties, about seven months, I guess. I don’t really know.”

“You don’t know how old you are?” Barry blinks, slowly, and gapes at her. Right. He’s time traveled before, but not like Nora. He doesn’t know how it can mess up your brain. How it makes your head all fuzzy and weird and-and makes you _hurt._ How she’s had to mostly do it in short bursts that made her forget what she’s doing. That unlock her from the temporal signature of her home timeline for too long, that make her say things her mom doesn’t like while she tries to get her head on straight.

One time she was almost arrested while that was happening to her. She hadn’t realized that her crimes had amassed so much until it was already happening, until they were grabbing for her and all she could do was sprint halfway across the world to the nearest safehouse. She’d asked her mom about later. About what crimes they were trying to bring her in for, outside of the one of being a metahuman.

Crimes of vigilantism. Destruction of government property. Freeing metahuman prisoners. Assault on a military personnel. Trespassing. Vandalism. A whole laundry list of other things. Whenever Nora thinks hers is getting long, Cisco tells her that she should see _his._ Or Cindy’s. Or Wally’s. A rap sheet twenty miles long for trying to save people from monsters.

“Uh… Time travel messed it up,” Nora admits. “A _lot._ Mom throws me birthday parties whenever she can, but usually it’s a few days early or late. Almost always early, actually. She’s the best.” Iris isn’t a great cook by any standard but she _is_ good at helping Cisco cook while Cynthia shouts encouragement from a nearby countertop, so Nora thinks it’s safe to say that she’s the driving force. They’re always her idea, anyway. “She likes to do this thing where she has Cisco bake cupcakes into ice cream cones… Mmm.”

“Oh, yeah, my parents used to do that!” Barry grins, suddenly, and oh, yeah, Nora looks like him, that’s for sure. Funny how she didn’t see the resemblance until now. “When I was, like, nine, I loved that trick. Iris, too. I… I didn’t know she remembered it, but I guess I can’t really be surprised…” He trails off. “Nora, can I ask you something?”

“...Sure.” She owes him this. One honest answer. She can give him this.

Barry takes a deep, slow breath. “In the future… Is Iris happy?”

Nora’s taken aback, but nods slowly and thinks over how she can answer without actually lying.

“Not always,” she finally says, leaning back in her chair and tapping her foot fast. “But yes. She’s happy. She loves you more than anything, and she’s the best mom I could ever have hoped for, and I don’t know what I would do without her. She’s always been there for me.”

Nora pauses for a long time before sitting forward fast in her chair, bracing her elbows against the edge of it. Barry copies her position, eyes never leaving her face.

“There was… There was only one time I was ever scared of her, really,” Nora starts slowly. “I was eight, and-and I guess you could say I had this big secret that I wanted to tell her. She was the last person I told it to, just because she was the hardest to tell and I wanted to wait. I remember I came into her bedroom late one night and I just sat on the edge of her bed and I just started crying and I told her because I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to ever again, and… And it went fine.”

From the look on Barry’s face, she’s pretty sure her dad recognizes just what _kind_ of ‘secret’ it was, but thankfully he doesn’t say anything and just lets her finish her story. Nora’s thankful for that. She’s not sure if it’d be worth it to tell Barry.

“So, yeah,” Nora finishes, kind of lamely. “She’s the best mom I could ever want. She’s not happy all the time. Sometimes-sometimes certain things hit her really hard, because they remind her of really bad times, but… When she laughs, she means it. I love her more than anyone else in the whole world.”

Barry grins at her, warmer and far more familiar than Nora feels deserves. “I do too.”

* * *

“You ready?” Iris checks, adjusting Nora’s goggles on her head. Nora ducks away from her and Cisco immediately pushes her back toward her mother, clicking his tongue as Iris licks her thumb and rubs it at Nora’s cheek.

“Mo- _om,_ stop it,” she groans, sounding more like a little kid than she has in years. “I’m fine. I’m gonna be fine. I’m the readiest I’ll ever be.”

Cisco claps her shoulder with his black-gloved hands. “You’re gonna do us proud, baby girl. Cindy’s sorry she couldn’t be here to see you off, but we can only hold the building for so long before they realize that it’s only a handful of people. The more heavy hitters we’ve got out there, the better.”

Nora nods, hugging her uncle tightly before turning back to her mom. Iris closes her eyes and presses their foreheads together. “Good luck, sweetheart. Give your dad a hug from me, okay?”

“You got it.” Nora hugs her mom tighter than she ever has before. One last squeeze for the road. It makes her trembling stop. She suddenly feels like she can’t breathe. “I love you, mom. So, so much. You know that, right?”

“I know,” Iris whispers hoarsely as the whole building suddenly shakes. Distantly, Nora can hear Cynthia shout something unintelligible, and the building shakes again, harder this time. “You need to go, Nora. We don’t have much time. I love you so much, sweetie.”

Nora nods, afraid of saying something that’ll make her burst into tears but hoping that her message comes across anyway, and turns to the last person in their little group. There’s nothing much to say, though, so all she can really do is drag Meloni in for a hard kiss that feels like desperation and tastes like the last day on earth. Dimly, Nora is aware that she’s crying.

“Find me again,” Meloni whispers, curling their little fingers together. “Promise me, Sunshine. Promise you’ll come back to me.”

“Always,” Nora hums into her skin, before stepping back and wiping her tears away and pulling her goggles down so they won’t see any more of them fall.

She steps up onto the Cosmic Treadmill (really, Cisco?) and looks around at what’s left of her family and imagines what this would be like if her brother and her father were there to see her off. She supposes that if they were, she probably wouldn’t need to go back in time to fix things and save lives in the first place.

Nora takes a deep breath, rolls her shoulders back, lets the lightning fill her veins, and starts running.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm danteramon on tumblr.


End file.
